Technology news

GUEST: By now you are probably talking to machines more often than you are to your neighbors, your old college friends, or even your mom. Voice interfaces are everywhere. We put an Amazon Echo or Google Home in our kitchens and they quickly became part of our morning routine. We talk to Siri to find a good movie to watch. We search, send messages, control our connected devices, and we shop —  all by voice. For brands and marketers, this provides a unique opportunity to converse d

In 2015, Ashley Madison, adult dating site designed to facilitate discreet, extramarital affairs, reported that its user databases had been leaked, revealing the details of up to 37 million users. An anonymous user filed a class-action lawsuit against the site’s parent company, Avid Life Media, alleging that it had failed to take "necessary and reasonable precautions" to protect its user data. On Friday, they company reached a tentative settlement with potential plaintiffs, to the tune of

The video doesn’t even do it justice. I wish you could have seen it in person. A recording can’t quite capture what everyone in the room felt: the need to pay attention for three minutes straight.
Every time I get back from a tech conference, my friends and colleagues want to know what the highlight was. I typically give them a half-hearted summary of the food, speakers, and weather. But not this time.
I was at Startupfest this week in Montreal and there was only one thing that anyon

Amazon.com is reportedly working on launching its own messaging app called Anytime, according to a report from AFTV News. The retail giant has begun to survey its customers about potential features, although it’s not clear what form the final product will take.AFTV News explains that Anytime appears to be “an all-in-one feature rich service that could even rival social networks,” with a focus on messaging, voice and video calls, and photo sharing, with users able to apply filte

Disney’s D23 Expo is an opportunity for fans to celebrate characters and properties they love, but it’s also a chance for Disney to reveal trailers and make a ton of movie announcements. With studios like Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel all contributing to the company’s prodigious output, there was a lot to cover on the movie front. As in years past, the studio broke things up over two different presentations: one focusing on animated films, and the other on live-action production

It was two years ago, on July 14th, 2015, that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto — marking the first time we had ever explored this mysterious small world. The probe whizzed by within 7,750 miles of the dwarf planet’s surface and snapped the first ever close-up images of Pluto and its weird moons. Now, New Horizons is way beyond Pluto, journeying to another object at edge of the Solar System. But you can relive the flyby with this new animation from NASA that takes y

Cory Doctorow has made several careers out of thinking about the future, as a journalist and co-editor of Boing Boing, an activist with strong ties to the Creative Commons movement and the right-to-privacy movement, and an author of novels that largely revolve around the ways changing technology changes society. From his debut novel, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom (about rival groups of Walt Disney World designers in a post-scarcity society where social currency determines personal value), to

Jon “Neverdie” Jacobs has done some crazy things, like running for “President of Virtual Reality” and buying a virtual asteroid for $100,000 in real money in the online game Entropia Universe. Now, his Neverdie company is trying to raise a ton of money via the Ethereum cryptocurrency through an initial coin offering (ICO) so that he can build cross-platform online game avatars. It may seem far out, but he has already raised more than $2.1 million from backers.
Like Bitcoi

GUEST: Whether it be Bitcoin or Ethereum, every cryptocurrency has suffered massive losses over the past several days. Prices have dropped to as low as 64 percent, bringing the entire cryptocurrency market cap down to $70 billion from $110 billion.
Above: Cryptocurrency market capitalization. Source: Coinmarketcap.com/chartsImage Credit: coinmarketcap.com
Ethereum’s price has gone from $400 right down to $151 in about a month, leading investors to panic sell. On the other hand, Bitcoin, wh

Jez San has been a pioneer in games, online gambling, and crytocurrency. And his latest startup, FunFair, allows him to combine all of those passions at once.
San believes the future of games and online gambling lies in Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that distributes itself across many computers in what is called a blockchain. Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum has become a hot platform for secure and transparent trading. But Ethereum is different from Bitcoin because you can build software programs (dubb

The BBC has just announced that Jodie Whittaker will be the latest actor to take on the role of The Doctor on Doctor Who as the Thirteenth Doctor. Whittaker will replace the current Doctor (the 12th in the series’s history), played by Peter Capaldi, in an upcoming Christmas special before taking on the role fully in the upcoming 11th series of the long-running British science fiction show, which is expected to air in late 2018.
In a interview with the BBC, Whittaker commented that "It's mo

This weekend at its D23 Expo, Disney offered several new details about its themed expansion land Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. But it was a much briefer announcement, confirming rumors that the company was working on an immersive, themed hotel set in George Lucas’ universe, that offered perhaps the most intriguing hint of where the company sees its parks and resorts businesses going.
Basically, Disney wants to build a Westworld for Star Wars fans.
That sounds like a bit of hyperbole on i

In May 2017 Ohio congressman Tim Ryan visited San Francisco to continue a dialogue with Bay Area entrepreneurs on connecting the middle of the country to Silicon Valley for growth.
Rep. Ryan joined Maker City co-founder Peter Hirshberg in conversation with Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly media and author of the forthcoming book, WTF: What’s the Future, which examines how companies, policies and incentives must change at a time of rapid technological and economic change.

In Theodora Goss’ debut novel, the daughter of Doctor Jekyll discovers that her father was part of a secret society of mad scientists. This being a gothic fantasy novel, she naturally befriends their dangerous and beautiful creations. In a world where cinematic universes have struggled to reimagine some of literature’s classic icons, including this summer’s abysmal The Mummy, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the monster mashup that we really need.
Goss has

Despite the best efforts from Apple (with the Apple Watch), Google (with Android Wear), Samsung (with the Galaxy Gear), Pebble (with the, uh, Pebble), and dozens of other companies, the dream of the smartwatch hasn’t really taken off. Turns out that turning a smartphone into a wrist device isn’t really that appealing. Even if you can somehow get the right balance of battery life, device size, and developer support, people just aren’t really interested in getting anything more t

The Lost Arcade is part documentary and part eulogy for the iconic New York video game arcade Chinatown Fair in all its messy, beloved neon glory. People would embark on pilgrimages there to play the games they loved in a community that some described as family. Battles were fought through classic fighting games like Tekken, and rivalries were born. When Chinatown Fair shuttered its doors in 2011 after nearly 30 years, it felt personal for a lot of people.
And it was personal

People who say “never meet your heroes” must have shitty heroes.
I’m attending CanJam London this weekend — an event organized by the guys responsible for the Head-Fi audiophile community — and have met a person I greatly admire: Axel Grell. He’s Sennheiser’s chief headphone engineer, counting among his accomplishments the classic HD 600 and 650 and the newer HD 800 and 800 S. Before today, I was a fan of his work, but having met and talked to him, I&rsq

This is interesting.
A company called Nexus Studios says it tested Apple’s ARKit tracking technology with a Cardboard VR headset and found it to do a suitable job. Tilt Brush artwork is said to have been placed throughout an outdoor environment with point clouds displayed in VR to show the location of real-world objects — operating as a kind of safety system.
“It’s possible to do both pass-through AR (where the single camera feed is displayed to both eyes), as well as ins

GUEST: Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are not just tools for streamlining customer engagement. They represent an opportunity for companies to completely rethink how they build context around each individual, ultimately creating a better experience and a more loyal customer.
By tapping into the potential of these new technologies, brands can cost-effectively enable and empower sophisticated, relevant types of two-way communications with existing and potential customers. These t

Disney always puts a big focus on its parks at D23 Expo, and today it revealed some important new information about the upcoming Star Wars lands. First off is the official name. They’ll be called Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, tying into the overall concept of the lands being set on a remote planetary outpost that’s outside the normal hustle and bustle of space travel.
Walt Disney Imagineering portfolio creative executive Scott Trowbridge revealed some additional details about the t

Kingdom Hearts 3, the long awaited third major installment in the epic Final Fantasy and Disney crossover RPG series, finally has a release date, although it remains somewhat ambiguous for now. At the conclusion of a new Toy Story-themed trailer of the game shown off at Disney’s D23 expo today, developer Square Enix revealed that the game would indeed be coming out in 2018. Even better news: from the footage shown off of Sora and pals Donald and Goofy teaming up with Woody and Buzz Lightye